A significant change has been made to keep the leave and leave years in days the same even after a change to the employees Working day figure. The Working day found on the employees work/edit page is used to determine how many hours are to be booked (on their work pattern) before a 'day' of leave is counted e.g. 7 hours. In the past when you changed the working day to fit a new work pattern it would change the days calculation and an adjustment had to be made to the leave year to reflect this. Now when a leave request is made for, for instance 2 days and 16 hrs it will always be 2 days and 16 hrs even after changing the working day from 8 hrs to 7 hrs. The recommended approach is to update the employees working day to match the new work pattern, at the same time as the employees work pattern is updated.

Custom Fields can now be added to record imformation about your staff that is important to your business.

To make use of this valuable feature you should first turn it on by going to Admin > System Functionality > Set Functionality Required and tick 'Extra User Fields'.

Then you will want to add the new fields by going to Admin > System Functionality > Extras. Here you can add the fields that you want. There are 10 each of the following data types:

Title - text and headings to define sections

Bit - a true/false option presented as a checkbox

Date - with date picker

Decimal - to 4 decimal places

Int - whole numbers

Varchar - short text

VarCharMax - multiple lines of text

Each extra field can be set to be completed by management only or management and the employee themselves. The display order of each field can be controlled to suit your needs. Client Admin access to these fields is People > Employee name > Extras and employees can find them at My details > Extras.

Features still to come include custom help files for each custom field, facility to build dropdown menus and a report to see the extra fields at a company level.

A file can be uploaded, accessible by everyone in your Company such as your Company Handbooks or by an individual employee such as their Contract of employment. Until now this was a library of files that the employee/HR could access for reference. Any access they made was logged.

In addition to this you can now set that the employee is REQUIRED to read and/or accept them with a digital signature. This might be amendments to their contract or new versions of an important Company document. Any document that still needs read or signed will be highlighted on the employees Dashboard. HR have access to a list of documents where these actions are still outstanding.

You have always been able to add tasks to yourself, another employee or a group that can then be collected by an employe in that group or assigned by the manager.

We have now added a new way to add a task for everyone in the company, a task to everyone in one or more groups or a task for a selection of people. Basically this means you can add one task to more than one person. It might be to read the newly drafted Company Handbook or sign off a document or submit expenses.

To use the ToDo module it should be turned on in Admin > System Functionality > Set Functionality Required and the tasks can then be added by going to Actions > ToDo's > ToDo Menu.

A new report is available to all staff to review their groups Calendar and other groups they have an interest in (e.g. manager of a group). The report can be found on the Dashboard or at Actions > Leave > My Team Calendar.

When adding a new employee who will NOT be accessing the site, or you don't yet know their email address you can click on the 'Set as NoEmail' button to make the system add a pretend or temporary holding email address for them. It will initially be set as NoEmail+ToBeCreated@ewassist.co.uk but this will change to NoEmail+surname.inital.lettersandnumbers@ewassist.co.uk once you add them.

You can make sure existing Employees who don't have an email address are set up correctly by going to their Work/Edit page and clicking the 'Set as NoEmail' button and clicking Submit.

This ensures that the email address is unique in our database and most importantly, if an email is inadvertently sent to this address it will arrive somewhere and not bounce. Bounced emails tend to imply that the sender may be a spammer and with enough bounced email we may be listed as an email baddie. This will make it harder for us to make sure you get the emails you expect to recieve.

A new report engine has been added to support the new Microsoft Edge browser along with all the other browsers such as Chrome, IE and Safari. The new reports engine doesn't just look better, it also allows you to select a date easier with the calendar icon, find data in the reports and zoom the report to make it fit on the screen better.

Two new reports have also been added.

The first report shows some key statistics for your leave absence. A company statistical report is first shown but this can be reduced to just show a single department or an individual. This report is found at reports > Leave > Users Leave > Leave Stats.

The second report shows a calendar view of leave and sickness information overlaid over the employees work pattern. This report is available at Reports > leave > calendarised > Work/Leave/Sick

Our software is designed to assist the recording and management of information both during the time of the individual's employment with your Company and after it has ended for the benefit of the Company. Your employer is required by law to keep this information and the employee is obliged to provide it ,usually contractually.

A number of updates have been made to the system to meet the new GDPR legislation that is coming into effect on the 25th May 2018. A summary of the major changes are:

If your company DOES NOT use its own GDPR system and records your staff's consent - then you may enable the GDPR consent feature in this system by going to Admin > System Functionality > Set Functionality Required. It is turned OFF by default.

A new functionality role of GDPR Admin/DPO has been added. At least one employee should be given this role in order to manage the new data processing features listed below.

A new GDPR menu can be found in the top menu of the Dashboard.

Each member of staff has the option to Accept or Withdraw their consent to have their data recorded in this software. Consent is initially set as given for all existing employees and employees added in the future to minimise disruption. The withdrawal of consent will send an email to the GDPR Admin/DPO informing them of the decision and remove the employee's access to the software. Future access can be regained by accepting the use of your data in this software. Withdrawing your consent will severely limit your ability to use the software but other staff such as your manager and your Human Resource team will still be able to use the software on your behalf.

The GDPR Admín can withdraw and accept your data to be used on your behalf and can upload documents to show acceptance has been given outside of this software.

A history of the employee and the DPO's choices are kept and the latest decision from either party takes effect.

Personal information for the employee can be Removed upon request by the GDPR Admin. This includes data such as personal addresses, bank details, birth date, personal email addresses and medical information etc. This does not include company information such as training records, expenses, leave, sickness and injury records etc.

An individual employee's data or your entire recorded history can be exported from the software by the use of the reports.

An officially written request can be made to delete your site completely. This will destroy ALL of your data FOREVER.